Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

Volume 64 of New Perspectives on Turkey is the second issue of this journal produced during the COVID-19 pandemic. While our lives continue to be turned and twisted in various ways, this volume, with its rich and diverse content, is testimony that we are settling down with the “new normal.” This volume brings together four independent articles and a mini dossier consisting of three articles and a lengthy introductory essay. The independent articles cover populism and elections, conflict resolution and women, collective memory and national identity, and finally climate change and public health. The final article is one that contributes to the nascent scholarship in Turkey on the impact of climate change. As editors we are happy to lead the discussion in this field and we will try to pursue it in the future. The mini dossier, guest edited by Cenk Özbay and Kerem Öktem, became increasingly topical as the articles were being processed. At this writing, the increasing visibility and mobilization of the LGBTI community since the turn of the century is confronting a serious backlash. Attacks against women’s demands for equality and attacks against the LGBTI community have been on the rise especially in the past few years. On the first day of 2021, the President of Turkey made a top-down appointment to the rectorship of Boğaziçi University, which triggered protests by its students, to which the government has responded by arresting and demonizing the protestors, especially LGBTI individuals. More recently, on March 20, 2021, the President pulled the country out of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the İstanbul Convention, through a late-night presidential decree. These acts are the most recent examples, and in a way, just the tip of the iceberg, in the government’s increasing gender conservatism and authoritarianism. Hence, the mini dossier is a very timely attempt to critically reflect on these developments. The first article of this issue is by Osman Şahin on populism and elections, a topic that has global reverberations in countries across the globe from India to the United States, from Russia to Brazil. As social scientists around the world are grappling to understand the ways in which populist regimes generate support, Osman Şahin studies the 2015 general elections in Turkey which were held twice within a period of five months. He argues that by triggering perceptions of ontological insecurity through the Kurdish issue, the ruling populist Justice and Development Party (AKP) managed to increase its 1